January 28, 2006

House Keeping

Moving your office is not something I'd recommend doing often. I've spent the past 4 weeks preparing, building, buying, packing and unpacking my whole life. It's not been fun. Luckily my new office is gorgeous and expanded (we've added to our wellness group a Physiatrist, Podiatrist and a Yoga studio!).

Additionally, due to unforeseen circumstances with my web host, I had to migrate all of my websites to a new server. Given that this site currently consists of over 450 individual pages and a content management system that was not to be taken lightly either. Anyway, this is my way of saying sorry that I haven't posted more (not that there's much going on in the AOM world right now) and please email me if anything seems broken to admin@tcmstudent.com.

January 22, 2006

Acupuncture Turns off Pain Centers: BBC Experiment

The BBC has a new TV series called Alternative Medicine: The Evidence, presented by scientist Professor Kathy Sykes from Bristol University. The first program demonstrates a study they conducted using the glorious fMRI and Acupuncture.

The study involved two groups undergoing two different types of needling with real time fMRIs being taken. The first group had a point on the back of the hand (I think LI4 but not sure) needled 1 centimeter with twisting to achieve de qi, the other had the same point needled only 1 millimeter without any manipulation. What they found is that the superficial needling group showed a typical pain or touch response to the needle being inserted, and that's it. The deep needle group, however, showed a deactivation of the limbic system.

It was previously thought areas of the cerebral cortex were excited by Acupuncture, not deactivated. This leads the scientists to believe they have found part of the reasoning behind Acupunctures effect on relieving pain.

January 11, 2006

Naturaldoc - "Why Limit Ourselves?"

Congrats to Naturaldoc for being published on Acupuncture Today.

'We currently live in a time where the concept of medicine as science seems to dominate public view. Everyone now wants to be part of this trend. For us as acupuncturists or practitioners of Oriental medicine, this means trying to understand and verbally alter our perceptions and descriptions of events as we understand them. This can be an interesting challenge on the one hand, and also a severely limiting issue on the other.'